Hamilton lost the victory and the lead in the F1 drivers’ championship at the restart in Baku after a dramatic suspension at Turn 1.
Moments after jumping forward for the two-lap restart triggered by Max Verstappen’s accident, Hamilton’s front tires blocked when he hit the brakes and he rolled down the escape road.
After Hamilton drove home at the bottom of the field, Hamilton immediately told his team that he suspected what had caused the drama: the famous Mercedes braking magic.
Over the team radio he said: “Have I left the magic on? I could have sworn I turned that off. “
What is this magical setting and what exactly does it do?
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The magic button
We heard that it was mentioned on the radio on many occasions, sometimes as a “magic paddle,” and George Russell talked about pushing the “magic button” last year during his one-off appearance on Sakhir.
Brake Magic is actually a button on the back of the steering wheel that is a very clever tool to help the driver quickly generate heat for the front tires.
When the F1 switched to hybrid drives in 2014, it knew that the braking system also had to be overhauled. Because in view of the additional load on energy recovery via the MGU-K, more electronic support was needed for brake compensation.
Brake-by-wire system
Photo by: Giorgio Piola
As a result, teams had to get used to using a brake-by-wire system, where separate maps were created in the software to manage the braking balance between the front and rear wheels while maintaining the prevailing harvest level of the MGU-K. to consider.
While the brake preload was previously controlled via a manual lever in the cockpit, it is a process that has been shifted to the steering wheel via control settings.
This requires the driver to select increments on the dials along the bottom edge, which often light up on the steering wheel display when FOM is using the onboard recordings.
Mercedes W12 steering wheel detail
Photo by: Mercedes AMG
In this regard, the driver has a few aids available, with a rotary knob and two buttons on the Mercedes wheel for the brake balance and another rotary knob for selecting the engine braking strength.
Mercedes W12 steering wheel
Photo by: Mercedes AMG
The magic button, however, is an override setting, and when you press it, it sends the brake preload much further forward than you would ever use in normal racing conditions.
It shifts the braking balance to around 90 percent of the front axle, while a driver would normally choose between 55 and 60 percent in normal use. Once in the game, the magical setting also prevents MGU-K from recovering energy.
It is activated to transfer more of the brake heat into the tires so that they can get into their working area faster than with a normal setting.
In Hamilton’s case, he decided to use the magic brake function on the warm-up lap before the standing restart to heat up the front tires.
His success in heating up the brakes (and tires) was evident from the way we saw the brakes smoke so heavily as he waited for the grid to form behind him.
In his starting position, Hamilton will have deactivated the magic brake function using the controls on the steering wheel and then prepare for the restart.
But during the start, when he steered away from Sergio Perez on the run to turn 1, he accidentally pressed the “Magic” button – it activated the brake preload bypass.
This moved the braking balance forward, causing him to pull the brakes on Turn 1 before sailing past the apex into the run-off zone, effectively ending his chances for points.
The post-race investigation of Mercedes will investigate how Hamilton was able to react to the magical setting and this will potentially lead to adjustments to the steering wheel controls or software settings to ensure this doesn’t happen again.
Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes W12, blocked when restarting
Photo by: Charles Coates / Motorsport Images
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